Gail Zawacki says:Your comment is awaiting moderation. December 12, 2012 at 9:34 amNot to detract from the vitally important implications of old tree decline, but in their narrow focus the authors of this study didn’t include the rather crucial and even more deeply frightening fact that young trees are dying off just as rapidly. Underpinning the overall decline is the inexorably increasing, persistent background level of tropospheric ozone.Hundreds of studies have been carried out over decades, by academics collaborating with forestry agencies and agronomists to establish without any doubt that ozone, although invisible, is highly toxic to vegetation, which absorbs it in the process of photosynthesis. Repairing damage to leaves and needles robs energy that should be devoted to developing roots systems, rendering plants more vulnerable to drought and wind.We saw this in both Irene and Sandy, where winds were not extraordinary and yet millions of trees fell over, knocking power out, their rotted interiors exposed.The most pernicious effect of ozone is to exhaust stored resources in trees making them more susceptible to pathogens, such as insects, disease and fungus. Most orthodox scientists blame these proximate attacks for tree decline, which is like blaming lung cancer on genetics instead of smoking.It will only be up for a week, but the reporter in this BBC radio programme about the astonishingly rapid spread of ash dieback makes it very, very clear when he visits Poland seeking the origins of the killer fungus, that not only are the old trees dying, but the young trees are going even faster http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p7g10Any serious and complete discussion of the horrific and rapidly accelerating extinction event that is affecting all species around the world which doesn’t factor in the underlying poisonous effect of air pollution is, forgive the pun, missing the forest for the trees.Please click on my name to visit my website for more information – I won’t add a link or likely this comment will be held forever in moderation purgatory. But there’s a page at the top of the blog where you can download a free book on this topic – also, I highly recommend “An Appalachian Tragedy” which can be obtained used on Amazon for very little and is an excellent primer on this subject.